Reflections on a Snowy Night….
I watched a new documentary about Elizabeth Smart.
All these years later, she seems to live in a remarkably emotionally regulated space – clear, grounded, and steady. What struck me most was how she described what kept her going, the love she knew at 14, and the strength she held onto from being deeply connected to her family. To having been seen, soothed, safe, and secure. To having a secure attachment in childhood.
She spoke about “the monsters,” as she called them, who took her.
And I found myself thinking – wow – she’s good.
Not because what happened to her was survivable in any ordinary sense – it wasn’t. But because she had something within her that was already organized around safety and connection. Something real to know…to hold on to.
In a way, her story is the opposite of mine.
I didn’t begin with safety.
I began with an abusive family, and the nervous system’s brilliant adaptations that can come from that.
But later – as an adult – I entered a safe relationship with my husband. And later still, in the presence of true relational steadiness in therapy, I began to acquire something I didn’t start with – earned or learned secure attachment. The power of the therapeutic relationship.
Elizabeth seemed to have secure attachment before she was abducted.
I developed it later in life.
Different beginnings. Different routes. Similar truths –
Connection – neuroplasticity – changes what our nervous system experiences.
And sometimes, the most life-saving thing isn’t a “tool” or an insight.
It can be just one steady relationship – long enough, kind enough, attuned, and safe enough that the embodied mind can come to discern the difference between danger and safety. That you can live free from the constraints of your past.
I’m grateful – all the time – that healing can be built, and that what happens later can matter just as much as what happened first.